NCPP's educational partner, Deltek just published its Q1 2021 State and Local Procurement Snapshot. Highlights include information about the state, local and education (SLED) market and the #1 top industry for this quarter. Find out more here.

NCPP Legislative Advocacy Working Group monitors proposed legislation that affects cooperative procurement and our members. Below are latest updates and how they might affect your government sales:

SB60 made a technical change to the narrow cooperative purchasing exemption that allows the purchase of HVAC components or systems through cooperative purchasing contracts. Under current law, only single-award HVAC contracts were approved for use by local public agencies and school districts. This bill changes that standard to allow for multiple-award contract to be approved by the Examiners of Public Accounts. This change should open HVAC contracts to more public agencies in the state.

HB187/SB15 specifically added “lease” and “lease-purchase” to the scope of the cooperative purchasing law for both school districts and local public agencies. This bill was in response to a 2019 Examiners memo stating those options were outside the scope of the cooperative law. With this change in law, the memo has been withdrawn and these options are now expressly included within the types of purchase methods available through cooperative purchasing contracts.

SB171 new legislation set to become law October 1, 2021 that provides a clear authorization for counties to use cooperative purchasing contracts. This is new authority that did not previously exist. It provides that a county may enter into cooperative purchasing contracts for goods and services, and in a separate statute provides an exemption from public notice requirements that previously would have made cooperative purchasing contract use not possible.

This has been a multi-year effort to get signed into law. Previous attempts with similar legislative language failed to gain momentum past the House of Representatives, this year the language was broadened, and this bill version is better in terms of what it authorizes that our previous attempts. The legislation passed through the committee process and received unanimous support in both bodies of the legislature and was signed by the Governor.

In April of this year, the New York State Assembly and Senate extended the ability of state entities, municipalities, school districts and other local governmental entities the ability to piggyback on other government agency contracts.

SB2505/AB3005, one of the 2021-2022 fiscal year budget bills, included provisions relating to the procurement process and procurement contracts for the state. With its passage, the State of New York may continue to piggyback on cooperative contracts until 2026.

SB1090 Gaughran/AB2580 Thiele amended the general municipal law relating to providing local governments greater contract flexibility and cost savings by continuing the practice of allowing piggyback purchasing among political subdivisions. With the passage of this bill, local government entities may continue to use cooperative contracts until 2023.

Other legislation in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas is being monitored as well.